Potential Apple Products to Look Forward to in 2014

KGI Securities’ Ming Chi Kuo, a market analyst with arguably one of the most reliable track records on new Apple releases, has recently come up with more noteworthy ideas on what to expect from Cupertino in the upcoming periods.

Below are a number of potential Apple products that have been mentioned in the analyst’s latest research report:

12 inch Macbook Air with Retina Display

Rather than releasing an iPad device with a larger form factor, Apple is said to be in the process of preparing a 12 inch MacBook Air that will sport a much improved—though yet to be specified—resolution, possess better “clamshell structure”, feature a lighter, slimmer body, and utilize a Haswell-based processor from Intel. The product is currently expected by Kuo to make use of a form of low cost manufacturing technology, and will likely see a release at some point during Q2 or Q3 of 2014.

Affordable iMac

A cheaper, “budget” version of the iMac, expected to be announced alongside the new Macbook Air during Q2/Q3, is also said to be in the works. The updated model is projected to be lot more popular than last year’s iMac-line, which offered an entirely new design but was considered by some to be a tad too expensive for consumers (the 21.5 inch and 27 inch models are priced at around $1,300 USD and $1,800 USD, respectively, which is approximately $100 USD more than what the previous generation iMacs cost). It is suggested in Kuo’s research that the more affordable nature of the new iMac-line will help increase iMac shipments by approximately 10-20% YoY in 2014.

iPad and iPad mini refresh

In his report, Kuo also went ahead and made a few noteworthy predictions about the potential iPad mini 3 and iPad 6. Thanks to improving “oxide and and a-Si technologies,” the latter is currently expected to come with a ppi (pixel per inch) that exceeds the iPad 5’s by 30-40%. For the iPad mini, not much has been specified other than the fact that it may feature the same 2048 x 1536 resolution that is rumored for the second iPad mini.